And it’s darn hard to filled jobs in the skilled trades, as the NAM and our Manufacturing Institute are always stressing.

This includes a variety of workers with specialized skills acquired at vocational schools or in on-the-job-training during apprenticeships. The professions include electrician, bricklayer, carpenter, cabinetmaker, mason, plumber and welder. There’s a shortage of these workers because so many young people are encouraged to attend four-year colleges, not vocational schools. Also, these jobs are physically demanding. “It’s one of the baffling shortages of skills, since they’re well-paid, flexible positions,” Prising says. “You can have gainful employment for a long time. This isn’t work that will be outsourced or disappear. It’s locally based work with geographically transferable skills.”